The Cowboys Fire

Chapter 2

Lilly POV

Run Lilly! Come on, faster faster faster

I can hear him

The footsteps are gaining

Push

Push

PUSH!!!

If I can just get to work I’ll be safe. Hurry, almost there. I must have been running for so long. How stupid could I be. I left my car at work when I finished this morning, thinking the exercise would do me good. Now here I am, running from my stalker. I can’t believe I actually thought it would be alright.

There, just a few steps more and I’ll be there. I race to a stop, remembering the doors will be locked, furiously search through my pockets for my ID card. Where is it?

There. Pulling it out , I swipe it and the glass doors fly open, I swipe the card again on the other side and they instantly close. Standing there, on the other side of the street, he stands. Starring at me. I can’t look away.

Who are you??

Why are you doing this to me??

A cry breaks from my lips. Built from terror and welled up emotion. What am I going to do.

I turn around and walk into work. Needing the distraction. It’s not a great job but it gives me time in the day to go get my school work done. When my parents abandoned me, all those years ago, on the steps on the fire station, I never thought that even now, 15 years later, I would still be dealing with the fallout. Being shuffled around from group home to group home doesn’t allow much for making friends or building a nest egg for college. So when I aged out, I knew I had to get a job and fast. The first place that hired me was a bust, long hours for little to no pay. Eventually I found this. Night Crew at a new retirement community. There’s about twenty homes. I prepare meals in the industrial kitchen for breakfast lunch and dinner, deliver them all up to the residents for the following day, and do a spot of cleaning. I tend to clean and see all the residents first, then cook and deliver once everyone is in their beds. Then I can head home once I’m finished for a few hours of sleep. I’ve done this job for three years and although it’s not what I want to do in life, it is rewarding and the wages keep me in online college doing a class at a time. It’s slow going but I am getting there. I’ve also made a lot of friends here. A lot of the residents are amazing characters and from all over the country. Come to Florida for year round sun and relaxation.

It’s honestly great, Or I was until all this stalker business started. The last 6 months have been the longest of my life. I’ve never been so scared and it’s taking its toll. I’m hardly sleeping and half the time I’m heading out in this complex with my laptop rather than heading home.

It started as a joke, a couple of random pictures in the mail. I assumed it was an old system kid because they were all from when I was younger. Then some presents started arriving. They were strange things, homemade things with shells and hearts. I didn’t really know what to do with them. They didn’t have a name on, and I would have wondered if they were for the previous resident of my flat if not for the pictures of me that came first. It was odd but it was harmless. Then I started finding presents inside my home, on my bed and that shot it straight to alarming. I felt violated and that everything I had cherished about my home was now tarnished and dirty. No matter how hard I scrubbed I feared it would never be the same.

I went to the local precinct but without any indication of a suspect there wasn’t much they could do. After that things really got bad. I’ve often thought that, whoever this is, knew I had been to the police. He did not like that, not at all.

Everything changed then.

Now I had started receiving threats, letters detailing how I had upset him and disappointed him. Detailing how our life together would be. That he loved me but I needed to be punished for what I had done. Not that going to the police has actually done anything. I was still getting gifts, although they were more sinister than before. Dead bunches of flowers and a photoshopped picture of me in a wedding dress, then another the next day with my face scratched out.

So now, here I was, hiding out in a senior citizens complex hoping he doesn’t find a way in.

Learning my forehead against a cold marble wall, I take a few steadying breathes, and with no idea what else to do, I put on my big girl panties and head off to work.